High on Volt

Thanks for the cover story on electric cars ("Silicar Valley," Oct. 21). It makes sense that Silicon Valley might be poised at the frontier of this promising new (actually old) way to move people and things from one place to another. Lots of big opportunities now exist for creative and dedicated auto visionaries to become the General Motors of the 21st century. But no mention of GM's Chevy Volt, a car that could squash many a well-laid plan by those passionate pioneers featured in an otherwise intriguing piece. Of course, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc., are not exactly taking a nap here. These and other auto giants will soon come to market with Tesla-like vehicles at less than half the price. No wonder the horizon wears so wide a grin.

Ben Thum

Mountain View

Nuke Hysteria

Until we are willing to get over the nuclear hysteria and build nuclear plants electric cars make little sense. As an aside, can San Jose's Green Vision program go around the county and fix broken sprinkler heads in and around street landscaping, and retail and commercial complexes? I see broken water heads every day spewing thousands of gallons of water right down the drain.

Steve

From SanJoseInside.com

No Nukes

Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. It is arming, funding and training Hamas and Hezbollah. They are supporting terrorists who are killing Americans in Iraq. They are undermining peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians that could lead to a two-state solution and peace.

Iran claimed publicly to have 3,000 working centrifuges but until recently hid their entire uranium enrichment facility in Qom. Now, weeks after those facilities were made public by Presidents Obama and Sarkozy as well as Prime Minister Brown, there will be inspections of those facilities. But what has Iran hidden during these weeks, and are there other Iranian-controlled facilities that we don't know about either inside, or outside, Iran?

The current efforts to insure that Iran has a "peaceful" nuclear program are misguided. An atomic bomb for Iran is a jihadist with a dirty truck bomb spewing out radioactive contamination that will last for decades. The only safe policy toward Iran is no nuclear program at all for Iran until it stops supporting terrorists around the world and stops threatening its neighbors with elimination.

Bob Prichard

Tiburon

Struck Down

Barry Swenson pushed his high-profit high-rise residential towers with no smart growth features through the council, and now isn't it great he got struck with unsalable high rises with no retail stores, parks and no/few jobs ("Surreal Estate Campaign," The Fly, Oct. 21).

IMHO, could not have happened to a greedier don't care about San Jose developer than Barry.

Karma

From SanJoseInside.com